Mohammed Hijab – Proof the Quran Is Preserved with Sh. Ahmed Kamel
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the history and characteristics of the Quran, including its title and its meaning. They highlight the significance of protecting the title and the transmission of information to non-repeating people. The title system is discussed, including the use of "over the fun of the science" as a reference to the culture of modern times, and how it impacts the meaning of "over the fun of the science". The speakers also highlight the importance of "over the fun of the science" in the context of "over the fun of the science" and how it impacts the meaning of "over the fun of the science".
AI: Summary ©
For 1972, we will assure of the preservation of the Quran as we are now. But it's just interesting that when you look at it from a secular perspective, that when they look, and they analyze the material, the Codex ease and the manuscripts, they actually come to the same conclusion and it might take them a couple of 100 years to get to that conclusion, It is we who have revealed this reminder Zik and It is we who will take it upon us to preserve it, meaning Allah subhanaw taala and the Royal UI. So this suffices for us as so called inside this other extension of as Muslims, we learn how
to be hamdulillah especially for me, these are my teachers, hamdulillah Shama Joshua, I'm sure hired, you know, and the rest of them all my teachers as well actually had the pleasure of reading to the majority of them Quran. And I just want to start off by saying that this is a great opportunity for anyone who lives in the area, or even lives in London,
to attend the causes of injury, or adjust the Institute, because you'll get the best kind of Wallahi Eonni it's, it's equivalent, or if not much better than what you'll get in the Arab countries, this is the best, these are the best teachers you're going to find in Europe, that are going to be able to teach you Quranic studies that are going to be able to help you memorize the Quran in the correct way that all of them have ages, not just in Austin has an awesome camera, but all of the cameras, they have adjustments in all of the cameras. So this for those who don't understand we're gonna be talking about what the colors mean, and things like that, but these teachers are Mashallah the most
qualified teachers in Europe. And it's a great blessing for us to live in the West and have access to them. You know, for many of you, this will be you know, just around the quarter for you. So make sure if you haven't already done so that you find out how you can get involved because hydrocarbon talent will Khurana Allah, the best of you are those who learn the Quran, and then teach the Quran. So, this is just what I wanted to start off by saying, a lot of these are my teachers, I'm just here, you know, asking questions, and also inshallah having a conversation with my university friend, we went to the same university together. You know, what he was, he had a super memory so he
memorized the Quran. I don't know, is it one year?
Something like that. Yeah. It on a very humble.
Yes. Anyway, we can talk about that later on.
So inshallah, we're gonna start, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. And then we're going to have a conversation and then we're going to open it up to questions and answers, inshallah, that's going to be pretty much the, the system. So I want to start off by asking for those who, in a general sense, don't know how it works. How does preservation work? And in other words, how has the Quran bring been preserved?
Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim, Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu wa sallam Allah says, Allah help you shuffle, mousseline CD No, have you been involved with Amina Mohammed. While early he was so happy your mind was blown Nana home loan and about Firstly,
I must admit, it fills me with a childish, special type of Glee, sitting with my brother, friend, Mohammed, he has a unique ability in your last part of preserving and increasing to present topics in such a way that appeal both to the masses, and those of the intellectual, academic sort of background.
He has benefited me much more than I've benefited him, I can assure you of that. And it's something that I continuously held on to live forever.
Regardless, I hope you benefit from him and his insight just as much as I have in the US that I've known him. For. With regards to this topic. It's very interesting. And I'm especially glad that we are discussing it because something that's increasingly being brought to the forefront of the DAO and preservation of the Quran, the so called lectionaries, or the modes of resuscitation that are as it's known in the technical lexicon. And how to approach it from a
so a non Arab background Alhamdulillah we have our traditional handler, we have our books, and that's what shallow Tyler will be attempting to put across to you that this is not something that has been hiding under the table. Something that's not known within our tradition is something that's very well known.
And inshallah Mohammed will be approaching that perhaps from a different perspective from what has been said from a secular
Limit perspective and trying to marry between the two sides within the ITAR
for First of all, as so called insiders, as Muslims for the left hand, we have our own sort of
very comfortable, very, very comfortable go to answer. When it comes to stuff like this. We before the left, we're not waiting for this argument to say yeah, but now Okay, now I agree the brand is preserved. This is more as a defense, if we ought to be attacked, much more so than proof to me that the Quran is,
is preserved Alhamdulillah enough, and suffice for us in nationalism, netic were ineligible to have freedom and the discussion. So Pamela, I was brought to this sort of mentality, I was reminded of it when a brother it translated versus in case often It is we who have revealed this reminder, Vic, and it is We Who will take take it upon us to preserve it, meaning Allah subhanaw taala and the Royal we. So this suffices for us as so called insiders of their station of as Muslims, we will I will hand
now, as
Islam is increasingly put under the spotlight and things that we have, correctly, largely correctly taken for granted as Muslims are being questioned and questioned and scrutinized in ways that we are not comfortable and used to, it's important nonetheless, to know how to respond to these. So this is the second part discussion. So don't lose sight of the first Don't, don't lose sight to the first because that more than suffices for us. The latter is more to defend tradition, exactly the same as color not to go controversial. The reason why the scholars of the oma have taken upon upon themselves to be able to defend Islam from a philosophical theological perspective is to preserve
it, not because this is part inherent part of our tradition, but something that was necessary to fend off the enemies of Islam.
But having said that,
we must appreciate and we must get across the message to non believers to so called outsiders how special this book is how special the Quran is.
And I draw this example up just to highlight it for you. And hopefully, you can use that with us as if it were the case, that right now at this moment, every single most half meaning book, or parchment were in the book The Quran was inscribed, was to disappear right now,
overnight.
In every single Muslim community, you will have exactly the same book with exactly the same letters with exactly the same vowel things emerge and be transcribed and be recited out loud amongst every single Muslim community worldwide.
That's special. That's not normal. There is no other text that I personally know of at least that has that quality. Not definitely not any religious sacred text from it, let alone any
collection of chapters that exceeds an hour and the copy that we mostly use 600 pages recited out loud in one sitting. That's not something that I mean we take it for granted but they don't know that so we must get the message across of how special this book is. It's not something that is normal. It's truly special in our phone well according to analytic Allah promises. While Acadia, sternhell por analgesic helmy mood Decker, we have made this clear and easy to recite, memorize, revise etc, etc. And is there then someone who will try to remember is that some of them try to recite, memorize so on and so forth.
Now from a more academic perspective, once again from our tradition, a critical part that we must discuss when discussing preservation is is not even work there's a very famous statement attributed to ability to work on a
level that is not dementia measure or to even say the full statement in net is net aminuddin. Whenever that is not lapolla Mencia measure this net or the chain transmission of narration is from our religion. And if not for this is not then whoever wants will say whatever he wants. So it's Ned is our fullback when it comes to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam, the Sahaba the turban so and so scholar, this nuclear whatever they said This proved to me Well, this is strange transmission Alhamdulillah we're blessed as Hammad already mentioned to have in this institute. McLean, who have not just ascended and Hopson awesome but in all the 10 motovicity were mentioned
To a tutor as well means so we before the lucky Tyler can trace back every single thing we utter in the Quran, to the blessing lips of the Prophet sallallahu, alayhi wasallam
and this soul with a degree of terroir. Now, what does that mean? In a technical sense, there were two has many. So, there are differences, more discrepancies in terms of how each scholar would define it within the Hadoop tradition. But the general idea is as follows. There are two or anything that is matter motivated, has the quality of the workload is that which has been transmitted from a German from a large group of people to a large group of people in every level of transmission, such that it is practically impossible to belie what has been transmitted. So I'll repeat that one more time, what has been transmitted from one large group of people to another large group of people in
every level of transmission,
that such that it is practically impossible to rely on what has been transmitted. The Quran has that to a level that is unprecedented and prefer to modular modular in I mean, these these ascending that we speak of are not something that as hijab wounds and shallow tile highlight, it's not something that is only for the elites, academically, it is available in books, you combine McDonald's in East London alone, Mangia. democra in pubblicato, Pura
have for the light, Bashar, all these are books where we're in those as needed every single level, I mentioned, from imagery to the Prophet sallallahu Sallam and from interested himself. To
us to our level of research, there are a few other things I wanted to mention. But just for the sake of time, I think that's the main idea that you want to draw home. Number one, the Quran is not unlike any other book. The Quran is unlike any other book, it is not like any other book, it is very, very unique.
And we get a sense of that we're not really sure what to pin it on. But anyone who has this inside experience to appreciate the Quran is something else. It is not, it's not from here. It is as one scholar describes it the breath of God on earth, it is where the infinite means the finite. That's number one. Number two, from an academic perspective, the father later Allah we have a listener, and not just something that is discussed in academic circles, it is available, anyone who understands the science understands how to go through this, pick up a book of a senate go through the level of necessity to everyone after him and how we definitely have the word to the end from injury to those
before him and how we definitely have to work through them.
Now from a secular perspective, Mohammed, how are what are the discussions that are taking place
in the academic, non Muslim world with regards to the Quranic preservation?
So, from a secular perspective, like in the beginning of the 20th century, so we're talking about the 1900s, the beginning of the 1900s, orientalist, started to get their hands on the manuscripts of the Quran. So in 1911, there was a guy called Paul Casanova. He said that the Quran is not it was not compiled and codified or canonize the whatever he wants to say, at the time of automating law firm, which is the traditional view, let's say, because the traditional view is that, as many of you already know, but just to highlight this, this is our view as Muslims. The view is that when the Prophet Muhammad wa sallam read the Quran, then you had people memorize it. And then after that, you
know, at the time of Bach hafsa has it in her house. And then again, there was a legend at the time of author Madame la femme, which is like a council, where all of the Sahaba who are acquainted fully with the Quran, those who are the elites and understanding what the Quranic text meant, were able to confirm that this is the written text of the Quran. So this was at a time last man laughs and so this is the traditional view. So Paul Casanova, and other orientalist in the beginning of the 20th century said no, this is not correct, because actually, it's more likely to have done at the time of hijab and use of a coffee This is so he's saying that it was canonized maybe in this eight century
seven love in the blog doing the
automatic the neuron Yeah, so yeah, so this is Caliphate after Mulliken Marwan and then the governor was Alhaji music photography is their Araki governor of that particular caliphate. So he was saying it happened that time and if century, which is like let's see, I think
Marwan died 705 or something like this? Yeah. So the eighth century, so when they discovered the Sunnah manuscripts, okay, because they discovered these manuscripts in 1972. And when they went to Yemen, they found basically in a Muslim in a mustard in a mosque, they found in a top roof or something, a manuscript. Yeah. Which hadn't been touched. So they went and they checked out and
Ever since that time, they did radiocarbon dating on it. So they wanted to see what time because radiocarbon dating is a archaeological method of inquiry, where you find out, okay, when did this parchment or this manuscript actually exist? So when they did that to a degree of like 95%, they found out it actually did coincide with the time of Othman, so went to the traditional view. So a lot of scholars revised this orientalist view in that was promulgated in the first part of the 20th century, orientalist themselves would revise it now non Muslim outsider orientalist, because of the new evidence, but there were other copies anyways at the top couple of manuscripts and other but
because of this as well, they revise this and they went back to kind of the traditional view that in fact, it was codified and canonized at the time of Othman laughs. And the truth is, like, Ahmed said, we don't actually require
sinad manuscript, to be honest with you, because who cares about us on our manuscript before 1972, we will assure of the preservation of the Quran as we are now. But it's just interesting that when you look at it from a secular perspective, that when they look and they analyze the material, the Codex season the manuscripts, they actually come to the same conclusion and might take them a couple of 100 years to get to that conclusion. I mean, think about that. I mean, if the orientalist, it took them about from 1900s, until even until now they're talking about this is gakuen, Nicholai Sinai, who I was reading his piece, I think he's part of the Oriental Oriental
Studies Department and Oxford University. And he and he was mentioning this kind of development and things like that. They've come to the view now of the traditional codification, why it took them how many 100 years to come to that view, because they want it to be critical in the beginning,
you know, using their own different methods, which are, which are different from, let's say, from the insider methods, but then they come to the insider conclusion after about 100 years. So, in a nutshell,
you know, up most the presentation are not based on manuscripts per se.
This is very important. They're not based on manuscripts per se. So we have the idea of tomahto, as he said, or that you have a multiplicity or a plethora of people
transmitting downwards to a different generation of people, the same content. And that is done through, as I've just said, he says three different ways. One of them was through the oral transmission, and the other way is through the the Russian of the most half, and the other one is through the Arabic language. So all of these tripartite, like triangulating method where you put all three of those things, that's our method of, of preservation, which is, which is different from other methods and so much as like now the orientalist don't want to really regard let's say, the old the old transmissions as important though, in other traditions, like, for example, the Jewish
tradition,
and ancient Greek tradition, the oral tradition is, and obviously African traditions, in terms of history is heavily prominent. So it even but the take home from this is that even not, even if you don't want to use that, you're going to come to the same conclusion, but it might take you a longer time to do so. So we have our own methods of preservation.
And our methods of preservation, in recent times have become more and more
from from an academic perspective has come more and more in line with the orientalist method of understanding of Quranic preservation. But we don't require the orientalist to tell us that we're right. Because we know that 4400 years and we don't require the Surat manuscripts or any other manuscripts for them Birmingham manuscripts when you have a manuscript for that matter, to to prove that for us. So I wanted to ask you now though, because this is this is an important point
is about the carrot, because a lot of people are get confused now. So it was that was the carrot. I don't understand what the kurata you mentioned already, that the carrot are really textual variants, but which are sanctioned by the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu wasallam. So it's not something which is development, because this is one of the other aspects of the orientalist narrative now that these textual variants are actually developmental. They weren't there at the time of the Prophet and the Sahaba. But for example, the difference between Malik and Malik Yama, Dean, so Owner of the Day of Judgment and King of the day of judgment was something which was something which some of the
orientalist narratives goes with was developed after a time of Muhammad after the Sahaba was something which was added into the skeletal lexical skeleton of Lexi the most half. So, how would you counter the claim that the art or the textual variants which are dialects, so whatever you want to call them, first of all, what is the carrot? And how would you counter the claim? That is the development from the time of the program's awesome
look locally? A few clarification
Number one is that the period
are undoubtedly once again, this is from inside a perspective, undoubtedly motivated. There are dozens of quotes that I can bring from traditional Islamic scholars and now we and others that clearly state this about the either someone because the scholar came before injury so when discuss those correct or after all the scholar came after an injury, so I was able to discuss all the reason why I make that distinction is that a shout to me?
You know what, let me actually backtrack a little bit.
It is not from Revelation that seven Pura initially were agreed upon by the owner of Quran reciters. So not as recited by teachers of Islam, it is not from Revelation, it is not necessarily always the case that seven Pura must have been agreed upon. And then three later added when intercessory Allah Allah came along, this is happenstance.
Exactly the same logic applies to the mother hen. So it is not always necessarily the case that it was going to be form of a hip that we agree upon the oma and then follow in our 50 tradition. Rather, there were many, many 50 approaches for principles different assume that different scholars, and much the Hadean applied to reach the
way of dealing with the sources, the four that we have this day, and the four that have been survived
throughout history and the food have been served by 1000s upon 1000s scholars are the foreign on the Hanafi, Maliki sheffey and humbling method, likewise,
is the case with the spirit the Quran was recited from the level of the beloved sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, then the Sahaba, they heard directly from his lesson mount Salalah, Alayhi Salaam, and they recited and taught it to their companions that are being unlike was the target of unison, and so forth. So that's number one, we have, as we referred to earlier, that is not the oral transmission.
Number two, we have the
Alfonso, one that happened with that phenomena took place, some Pura out to the worker and gloves that they had, perhaps in their actions became more prominent than others. Exactly like him. Think of it, I always like to refer to modern examples just to make sense of obscure topics. You know, all of you, for example, should try.
You don't know all these teachers, perhaps, you know, One prominent teacher, among his teachers have two prominent one, let's say and the ones that he would place in his agenda are one or two only. Does that mean he recited to only one or two? Obviously, no, he had many teachers, and everyone is invited to have more than one teacher to reaffirm the concepts of recitation, so on and so forth. In the agenda, however, one person's name will be mentioned. Because it's common chopper is, if you have this Senate, I can see the only one name of the one name of the one name was discovered through talking about this is good episode. If at every single level every single reciter mentioned every
single teacher there is it.
You wouldn't have one single jazz you'd have about a book of ages. Yeah. And that'd be impractical. So you mentioned the most prominent the most prominent Pura who later became known as a suburb, and a shell to be compiled from Obama then his completion. In his book, he shall to be did it in poetry form and became famous for that are the seven well known poorer later on, in Jerry's time, other citations to recited anyway, from a naturalistic phenomena I received from my teacher and outside, and I teach that to my students, so on and so forth, even just that he argued and improved in his niche, that those three that are attributed to three more prominent poorer, are
just as motivated as the other seven and improved through us in either sources. So just to kind of ask a probing question here, and maybe do a bit of a demonstration as well. You're saying that all of the ways in which the Quran is recited now, all of the using the multilateral ways, all of those ways have a chain of transmission of total, which means it's not just one person narrating to one person, but it's mass people and their entire mass people are every generation that goes back to the Prophet Muhammad Salah. Absolutely.
So this is at one yes with Yes. There's a difference between arguing the plural as a motivator, which is undoubtedly the case. I'll just read one example of that. Yeah. So
in it half Lula election. She had the de novo meeting, he says, Call Call him Suki ulterra to Sabah ality to Sarah autosar. Allah has shell to be
Well selesa to let you hear clearer Abuja for ya APU bahala Muto tierra maluma to Mina de basura una silla to Nana Nabi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. There you can be roofie shaman has Elijah, quite severe terminologies is using number one he says,
as
a sub electrical slideshow to be the seventh shell to be compiled out of SSR meaning out of conciseness the seventh atrocious shell to be compiled with elesa and the three later which is a misery added to the seven and this is Boma Dora. And initially, I mentioned Zoltan
which are Abuja for Yaqoob and Calif motiva Tierra, they are under mutawatir maluma to Mina de basura, necessarily known by those of the religion, so something that is commonly known not something that only elites would be aware of maluma to Mina de basura Mozilla to non obese hola La Jolla cinema revealed to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam caribou fishermen has a ledger no one argues and contest this except someone who is ignorant. So relatively harsh terms here. Why? Because the attorneys are available. It's not that he's the secret somewhere, they are right there for any help to anyone who is over the fun of the science to come and analyze. Yes, so I was gonna
ask, I was gonna say because nowadays, a lot of people are coming forward and saying, look, you know, all of if you look at all of those variants that you're talking about, yeah. That from Mohammed Salah Salam sanctioned, you'd have volumous encyclopedic works. But I got myself a copy of this book, which is actually all of the tongue cut out. And this nice
book here is where all of the it doesn't look encyclopedic to me, does it? Well, I'm really glad that you mentioned this because once again, the morava June, those who like to make a big fuss out of nothing and attack Islam with any sort of strawman argument, say what there are, I mean, I've heard up to 1000 rounds or something ridiculous like that. Oh, there are 23 rounds that you have, there are this number of protons that you have. So in one book, every single possible wedge is exactly the same stuff that you have if you open, but every time there's a difference, it's mentioned. So can we do a little demonstration?
We'll do this at random. Okay.
Okay, can you can you choose a page what you just did not know? Because it might look like it's pre planned. I said, random and then you know,
whatever pages so should we get some from the audience?
Go ahead. Brother. You look very eager. Come on coffee.
Yes, no, the good looking Brother, please. Yeah.
The good looking brother.
Yeah, just choose a page inshallah. And then yeah, any page, cuz then she was gonna tell us? Yes. Thank you.
I'll give you the money later. Yeah.
Tell us what's going on here. This is the beginning of a surah.
So it's the beginning of sukma. EDA. Okay. Thank you for choosing an easy section. Everything is easy for you. You remember the one yeah.
And we want to be a competition by the way. You know, the brother the brothers came together, they said, you know, we're gonna compete, so you memorize it first. I don't think anyone Good for you. As we mentioned,
every time when there's a difference, it is highlighted in the whole image. And this is how I mentioned in the margins. And this is something that's been done not just pre modern era, but something that's been done since the time the Sahaba actually, whenever they had or maybe concept of zero or something like that. They would highlight them appropriately. You can have much more professional examples of that.
Because the disbelievers are gonna try and get away from it just by talking
on your roadie Yeah, you have nothing
to lose
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mean lb tell her on a better lunenfeld Let me Robbie him worried we're
in the Hamish
shorba, b1, mirar. What about boon because, so how shorba recites were rude Werner as opposed to worried Bwana this particular example, has zero impact on the meaning because it's not changing the surfy element of
The word meaning is not changing who's doing what? Whether someone whether the verb is passive or active because it's a noun is purely dialectical. This one and old one.
were either halal tunefulness or do well a demon.
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Shannon, Nana rushaga Abu Jaffa bc Cooney noon callback Hoon
so Shannon,
a banana and Chava Abu Jaffer recite the channel and as Shen
as opposed to Shana and
what does this do? It has no impact on the meanings of the our example just it's not like we hiding something or examples with a meaning is impacted. And those two particular occasions there is no impact on me in fact your brother once again, but
when the meaning is impacted, it is out of
water towards the used, like, variants increasing in meaning of Solo is two words that are used for that. Does it come to us
so
Yeah, exactly. So tell us off in mana as opposed to thoughtful manner, so increase in abundance in meaning as opposed to contrary meanings. So malediction Yeah, very much with distinction there is a colloquium so it's not contradicting each other precisely for this one of the Quran. Well, I during an akuna Shannon comin, do Cumani less detail her on
what
the what telco? Well,
if no one knows
what
it
is any other differences, no differences, the only two differences that have impact on the actual morphological morphological setup of a word or those two, there are others. And this is actually good that you mentioned this, there are others that are to do with
that weedy elements where I like to go to 3d elements meaning differences in length of mood, differences in the straightness, if you like of the Elif whether there is a mela or not, once again, purely dialectical elements, nothing to do and impacting the mean. It's like literally don't think about it. It's accents or dialects. Like an Irish person, an American person, a British person, or English person and Australian person reading exactly the same text, they will each read it in their own accents. That's literally all it is. I see. So all of it goes back to Prophet Mohammed Salah zeldo salaam, with us I need that it's not encyclopedic look is pretty brief. It's the same kind of
600 pages here, isn't it? It's exactly the same. It's not. It's just notes that you can get, you can get this. It's not like we're hiding it. They pretend that we're hiding this, you know, you can buy this.
Or you can combine this as like, you know, anyway,
go ahead. I wanted to, especially if this is your field along with Eric, just very quickly highlight
other traditions, other religious traditions. So now we've explained how inside this view the preservation of the Quran has been discussed from a secular academic perspective and House of hannula the same conclusions have been reached. What about other religious traditions? I know especially they've been looking into Judaic traditions of Tafseer, an older version of the seals was biblical tradition so as to be fair and say that I'm not a specialist in text criticism, because that's a academic specialism, which requires multi lingual abilities like usually, especially in text criticism in the Bible, if we're talking about the biblical text, would require to know Hebrew
language, very high level and also Greek as well, maybe in addition to Aramaic, and be able to kind of decipher, but from what I do know, this is this is the category characteristic difference and very important that everyone he knows this, because when I was growing up, I heard the following statement that the Quran is a four letter word for word, you know, the same? Yeah. This is a simplistic rendition of what it is because letter for letter word for word. Yeah, but there are some letters and words which the Prophet had said in two different ways which both go back to Allah subhanaw taala. So if someone is not equipped with that reality, when they're confronted with it
from a non Muslim, they're going to be shocked by it. But the reality is, we have a method of understanding that and it goes back to Prophet Mohammed, the main difference now, between this and the biblical texts, I will say I'm going to summarize them. Number one,
the manuscripts that the Bible use, let's say for example, let's use the Old Testament. Yeah, so they use the Masoretic text to use the Dead Sea Scrolls which would which were found in the 70s. They used the
Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of,
of the Hebrew. So it's not even in the original language. Yeah. And all of these sects, by the way, are not dated anywhere near the time of Moses by consensus. And there's different
representations in the literature is that how comes? We're talking about the Old Testament for the time being and the New Testaments, the same thing applies.
So and now the academics say, for example, that you have different authors for each book, you have different authors for each book. Now, here's the thing, how do they decide what to put in or what to take out?
You have three layers of problem. Problem. One is the canonization method. We don't have a canon of books, just like the Old Testament, the New Testament Christians have a canon. Okay. And there's different books in each different canon. For example, partisans have 66 books, Catholics have 72 books and so on the Eastern Orthodox Christians have, I don't know, 7081 books. Yeah. in the, in the in the Bible. So number one, canon. Yeah. Who decides what books come in? What books come out? In a nutshell, Athanasius, a fourth century Christian scholar decided what books came in, and what books came out who gave him the ability to do that? Who gave him the right to do that? Well, it couldn't
have been God. It couldn't have been Jesus because He was 400 years after Jesus, or 300, and something years after Jesus. So that's one thing. The second problem is now How did he decide in terms of manuscript, what they're going to put in and what because now they've got let's say, for example, the Old Testament, the Septuagint. They've got the Masoretic text and the Dead Sea Scrolls, so they look for where they agree where they don't agree, and this is very important. There is no harmonizing method. Very important. This is the key difference.
There is no harmonizing method. In other words, if they have contradictions in two, for example, the Masoretic text goes against the Dead Sea Scrolls, and both of them are saying different things. Now the biblical scholar, the text critic is going to look and say, we can decide to do this and we can decide to do that Bruce Metzger said, you can flip a coin sometimes on these things. Like there's no harmonizing method for us. The harmonizing method is what the internet what is
what is mutawatir, what is goes back to the Prophet, they don't have that, unfortunately. So for them, they don't have a harmonizing method. So for them, there is no way you can compare a set of books, which have been canonized by a person who has no authority from God, even by their own admission, number one, and number two, who, which has different manuscripts, all of which contradict each other, some of which are even in different languages from each other, like the Septuagint is in Greek. And sometimes it's preferred, by the way than the original Hebrew translations in Old Testament script.
For some reasons that scholars say, there's no way you can, you can compare that with the Quranic method. So to summarize, the Quranic method of preservation is unmatched. And that is one of the main arguments for Islam being a true religion, because actually, you can't make these arguments. There's no academic discussion when it comes to Christianity and Judaism, as to the preservation of the text. And the fact that Jesus or Moses said, all of those things that we find in the Bible today, there's no discussion. In fact, there's consensus, even in their own scholarly circles, that in fact, those things are not entirely what Jesus said, or what Moses said, therefore, from this
perspective, we say, look, this is very important. If Allah wanted, God wants us to be guided. Yeah, if God wants us to be guided, surely, he should give us the same access point to the guidance that he gave the primary audience. Think about that. If God wants us to be guided, then surely we should have the same access to the prescriptions, the commands and the injunctions that the primary audience which were originally commissioned to believe were given. And we say, look, we are and we can prove through an academic route, as well as the spiritual route, whereas other traditions, especially Ancient Ones, can't do either. So with that, inshallah, we'll conclude